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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

We love our bread around here. In particular, we love our toast - everyone thrives on a good whole wheat or even grainier slice crisped to golden perfection, except the white-bread-only stepdad (who still prefers his toasted!). Whether for breakfast, lunch or a snack, it's the perfect comfort food and the vehicle for all sorts of spreads, sauces and other toppers. In my childhood, I was extremely partial to peanut butter or Nutella (if the toast had cooled) and either honey or cherry preserves on bread or bagels hot from the toaster. Granted, if my dietary restrictions allowed, a thick schmear of Nutella topped with a tart cherry preserve would be my manna (and I'd be back to my 230 pound self!). My sister is still a Nutella-only girl, and Mom always has been a extra-fruit spread fanatic.

I'm more like my mom these days, preferring choices with the most fruit and least "other stuff". Usually, we buy our jam (with the exception of last Summer when we had the Backyard Grape Jam!), since it's cost- and time-prohibitive to make and can our own when we all work and have other obligations during the week. However, over the past few weeks I've found three super-simple spreads that are either lightning-fast to throw together or cook unattended for long enough that other things can get done in the meanwhile. All of them have become favourites with not only me, but my immediate family and the guests we have hosted recently due to the recent loss of my grandfather. Not only is that slice of piping hot bread smeared with a home-made spread wonderfully familiar and comforting to eat, by making them it was a way for me to do something I knew and was confident in, a wonderful culinary hug in this unsettled time.

The first one I decided to make was actually thanks to one of my favourite food bloggers and a person I'm glad to have as a friend - Carla of Chocolate Moosey. At the beginning of June, she had a whole week of strawberry recipes on her blog, including delectable Strawberry Jam I have on my to-do list and the Vegan Strawberry Curd I eventually decided to make! I still had a jar of (very) well-aged Soused
Strawberries in my fridge and decided to make the curd with those instead of fresh ones. Since I wasn't sure what I'd be using it for (provided there were leftovers!), I also decided to use the freezing-stable tapioca starch as a thickener. Since it was out for another recipe, I used SucaNat as well, but the total amount of sugar was so small anyway you could easily just use regular sugar.